With the recent prevalence of digital cameras, it has become common to save photographed images in the form of digital data in media such as Secure Digital (SD) cards or Compact Flash (registered trademark) cards and to read image data from the media, as necessary, so that an image can be displayed on a monitor mounted in a personal computer or the image data can be output using a printing device to produce a photograph.
In this situation, a service for printing image data captured using a digital camera (hereinafter referred to as a “digital photograph printing service”) has been provided mainly in camera stores, photo studios, drug stores, or other stores. In the digital photograph printing service, generally, two methods are available for ordering photographic prints: placing a print order using a personal computer at home via the Internet, and bringing a medium to a service providing store and placing a print order using a dedicated reception terminal.
In the method of ordering photographic prints via the Internet, a user can place an order at any time at home.
In the method of ordering photographic prints using a dedicated reception terminal, on the other hand, due to the limitation on the number of reception terminals installed in a store, a user may wait to place an order until any reception terminal becomes available when all the reception terminals are occupied by other users. In order to improve the productivity of the photograph printing service, there is a method of increasing the number of reception terminals or reducing the time for one user to use a reception terminal. However, the increase in the number of reception terminals is costly and a certain amount of space is required to install a reception terminal. Therefore, it is more effective to reduce the time for one user to use a reception terminal, that is, the time involved per order.
In the latter method of ordering photographic prints, the order placement process is generally performed on a reception terminal using the following flow:
Operation Procedure 1: A user inserts a medium into the reception terminal.
Operation Procedure 2: Image data is read from the inserted medium.
Operation Procedure 3: The read image data is displayed as a list of images on a screen (hereinafter referred to as an “image selection screen”).
Operation Procedure 4: The user selects an image to be ordered to obtain a photographic print on the image selection screen.
Operation Procedure 5: After the selection, the user presses a “Place Order” button, and the order can be received.
When the read image data is displayed as a list of images in Operation Procedure 3, each image to be displayed needs to have a sufficient size to allow the user to specify an image. In addition, due to the limitation on the size of the display monitor on which the image selection screen is displayed, it is difficult to display all the images read from the medium at the same time. Therefore, it is common to group a certain number of images (a group of images is hereinafter referred to as a “page”) and to display images for one page on the image selection screen at the same time so that in Operation Procedure 4, the user can select an image while switching pages.
The order in which pages and images to be displayed on the image selection screen are arranged is generally defined in advance. Specifically, pages and images are displayed in order from the earliest photographing time or in order from the latest photographing time.
In recent years, due to the prevalence of digital cameras and the advent of large-capacity media, the amount of image data to be saved in the media has tended to increase. Thus, it is desirable to provide a method for reducing the time required to place an order and increasing the speed of reading image data desired by a user to help the user select an image.
PTL 1 discloses a technique in which when an instruction for changing a page to be displayed is issued by a user at a time prior to the completion of the reading of image data to be displayed on the page, image data corresponding to the top image on the specified page is preferentially read to quickly display images of image data.